Excellent documentary on early 80s Manchester (and the UK in general), post punk and the rise of Joy Division. Writer Jon Savage and director Grant Gee fully submerse you in the world of Ian Curtis, other band members and notable artists of that period.
Currently available on Hulu (not sure for how long).
Check what your internet sounds like:
http://www.codeorgan.com/
Just stumbled on this amazing video of Georgio Moroder playing with a vocoder. So thought I’d do a little tribute.
“I Feel Love”, that he co-wrote with Donna Summer, is his most famous. And was as important at Kraftwerk in building the foundations for house, techno and synthpop.
As some so elegantly put it on You Tube: “Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream were pioneers but it is Giorgio who put the FUNK in electro. Do the kids of today know what debt that is owed to this man.”
Said David Bowie of I Feel Love: “One day in Berlin … [Brian] Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ … he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer … He said, ‘This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.’ ”
Here’s a great video for one of my fave Moroder tracks – From Here To Eternity. Classic.
Moroder also is an essential part of late 70s and 80s culture, bringing disco and synthpop, synthesizers and computers, and a whole lot of funk to the masses writing and producing a wide range of classic pop songs and working on soundtracks for some of the biggest movies of the decade: Midnight Express, Scarface, Top Gun, Flashdance, Never Ending Story, American Gigolo, to name a few.
Here’s Fly Too High, co-written with Janis Ian.
He worked with Sique Sique Sputnik on their first album, which I’ve always thought was under-rated. “Ah, that was quite an, er, adventure. We had a lot of fun – God, crazy guys, ” he said of the band, in a 1996 interview with Future Music.
Here’s Sique Sique Sputnik, Atari Baby:
Moroder also produced Sparks:
And Blondie, Call Me:
And as a special bonus here’s Moroder with Phil Oakley in Together In Electric Dreams. But check out around 1:02, there appears to be a sound reactive computer animation. And some others later on.
Don’t really love this tune, but like the 8 bit sound reactive stuff:
Finally, I bet you didn’t know that Giorgio Moroder also produced a sports car with automotive engineer Claudio Zampolli – the Cizeta-Moroder V16T. Checkit:
One of the major sources for discovering music, when we were growing up had always been TV shows. In South Africa we had Pop Shop, in the UK, Top of the Pops. If you got on TV you were guaranteed a rush of sales the next day and a surge in demand for live appearances. Today, it’s YouTube. If I’m looking for a track, especially an oldie, I’m more likely to head for YouTube to check it out, before heading to ther iTunes store. When hanging around with mates, YouTube too is often the place music invariably gets played and new things are discovered. In the old days we used to go over to mates houses and watch VHS tapes of those shows).
The shortsightedness and greed of the record companies and artists (like Prince, see here and here) is definitely not in the spirit of the joy of music and what it represents. Ye olde record industry be gone with you I say! Be gone!
In a side note, I saw an interview with Depeche Mode the other day, where they recounted how they. lugging their heavy synths, took the Tube to their first Top of the Pops appearance. Ah, the age of innocence.
Depeche Mode, Somebody, complete with VHS tape fatigue:
Happy 5th birthday Dirt Crew Recordings!! To celebrate their 5th anniversary, my friends at Dirt Crew are giving away 10 free quality dirty house tracks from the likes of Tigerskin, Martinez, Tensnake and the Dirt Crew boys Break3000 and James Flavour themselves. These guys are one of my favourite DJ crews in Berlin at the moment.
Get the tracks here: http://www.whatpeopleplay.com/dirty
Check out their Myspace: www.myspace.com/dirtcrewrecordings
And then check out some of their other stuff, such as Till von Sein, Tigerskin, Marc Romboy and the 5 YearsDirt Crew compilation, here: http://www.whatpeopleplay.com/?redirect=/news_events/detail/1720
A great documentary about the invention of electronica. Enjoy…
(Note: This is jusy a preview. You are going to have to download the free Veoh player to view the full three hour doc, but well worth it).
“As innovative as they are influential, Kraftwerk’s contribution to the development of electronic music since their formation in 1970 remains unsurpassed. Having inspired everyone from Bowie to Coldplay, Siouxsie to Radiohead, this bizarre collective have also proven partly responsible for entire genres to develop – electronica, techno and synth-pop to name but three.”
Just designed new flier for new monthly Berlin event that Radarboy is involved in.
This month’s special guest is the legendary Sonar Collective’s Trickski
http://www.myspace.com/trickski
A lot of people have been asking for my super-maxi single re-edit of Flash in the Pan’s Midnight Man, that I did for the Midnight Men party. So here we go, all delicious 14 minutes of it:
(Ctrl/Right click to download – 33mb)
Hoagy Houghton’s project where random musical compositions written through colour using a grid, were then was translated into musical notes using a colour scale.
